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Biden Argues for Pay Constraints in Parting Shot at Wall Street

Biden Argues for Pay Constraints in Parting Shot at Wall Street

(Bloomberg) -- Vice President Joe Biden made a final plea to tighten limits on Wall Street bonuses as he delivered a Monday speech warning the next administration against rolling back financial rules.

Biden defended the Dodd-Frank Act’s overhaul of industry oversight since the 2008 financial crisis and called for the completion of a pay rule that has languished for years with the regulatory agencies. Though U.S. financial agencies proposed sweeping new pay rules earlier this year, there’s little time left to finish them before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

“We need to ensure that the executive compensation doesn’t go back to encouraging executive risk-taking,” Biden told an audience at Georgetown University in Washington, adding that “there’s more that has to be done.”

He praised such constraints at the Volcker Rule and controls on derivatives trading, but he noted the economic meltdown is already being forgotten. Biden cautioned against reversing the tide of financial regulations, as promised by Trump and his transition team.

“We can’t afford to go back to the policies that nearly brought down the entire economy just eight years ago,” Biden said. “We can’t allow the repeal of Dodd-Frank.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Hamilton in Washington at jhamilton33@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jesse Westbrook at jwestbrook1@bloomberg.net, Gregory Mott